Matrix: Redemption
by Sandbat
Summary: Chapter 4! After the fight at the Hel Club, Seven vows to go in search of answers. Meanwhile, Typhon and the crew of the Lamassu try to determine where they went wrong.
1. Prologue: Typhon Hangs Up

Title: Matrix: Redemption And Ascension.  
Author: Erin D. Lindsey  
Fandom: The Matrix  
Rating: R (just like the films) for violence, language, and some sexuality.  
Spoilers: All three films, the Animatrix, Enter the Matrix.  
Summary: Post Revolutions, about seventeen years later. When a maniac and his band of followers threaten both the Matrix and Zion, a new heroine must come to terms with her heritage and her destiny.

DISCLAIMER: I didn't create the Matrix, the characters in the Matrix films, the Animatrix, the comic books, the video games, or any of the other countless "official" Matrix tie-ins put forth by the Wachowski Brothers or the Warner Brothers. But this unofficial fanfiction story and some of the characters in it are the creations of my own fevered brain. Enjoy!

**MATRIX: Redemption**

By Erin D. Lindsey

PROLOGUE: Typhon Hangs Up.

Captain Greg Lyle of the _Lamassu_ was burning the midnight oil. He ran his fingers through his short-cropped blonde hair and sipped his coffee from a tin cup as he stared at the code on the screen in front of him. The only person jacked in now was Cassiopeia. Everyone else was either taking it easy or occupied elsewhere on the ship; Their regular operator Jax was taking some much-needed R&R, and Lyle had more than enough experience as an Operator under his belt to take over for awhile.

The object of Cassie's current observation was perplexing, to say the least. For the past few weeks they'd been tracking the activities of a sixteen-year-old hacker who went by the alias "Seven." The story on her seemed pretty simple and straightforward, at first. An orphan, she'd been bounced around "the system" all her life. Her primary agenda in cyberspace seemed to be a quest for her true identity, namely the search for any information regarding her true parents and their fate.

There was a birth certificate, but the hospital had no other record of her birth, nor was there anything about a mother who cut and run after giving birth to her. For all intents and purposes, it was as if Seven had simply sprung into being that morning at the hospital, seventeen years ago.

Captain Lyle knew that it was quite common for people to anonymously give up their children for adoption, especially girls Seven's own age who had gotten themselves "in trouble." And more often than not, such infants were also abandoned. The only thing that Seven (and those who were watching her) had to go on was the name on her birth certificate: Jane A. Anderson. The hypothesis was that the "Jane" was derived from "Jane Doe" and that she'd been abandoned. But where had they gotten the "A. Anderson from?

Captain Lyle was one of the few who knew, and the knowledge had left him deeply unsettled, to say the least. Yet despite the lack of information in the sources that she'd managed to hack, he knew that it would only be a matter of time before she managed to discover a clue, or otherwise make an intuitive leap of logic that would lead her in the right direction. This was an eventuality that Captain Lyle knew he could ill afford if his plans were to be set into motion.

Of course, he and everyone else who knew the truth about the Matrix were aware that children were not actually "born" to their prospective parents: after a sexual conjugation that that the Custodial machines deemed suitable enough to cause conception between any given couple, the fetuses were spawned within the Fields from the genetic material of the mother and father. Seven was no different, except for the fact that she had not been born "attached" to any parents that she had been able to find out about yet. But Seven's lack of progress towards this end was not for lack of trying.

So far, Seven's search had inspired her to hack into the city's official records: documents that probably would have been made available to her anyway when she turned eighteen. But it seemed that she was not content to wait until the City and the State felt that she was ready to know who she actually was and where she came from, and it was apparent that she was more than willing to buck the System to find out who she really was. In short, she was a perfect candidate for enlightenment about the true state of things within the Matrix and the "real world." So was the little group of teen hackers and pranksters that she'd managed to befriend at her local school. But of them all, Seven was deemed the closest to the paradigm shift that heralded the Awakening and subsequent unplugging from the Matrix. It was assumed that once her mind was freed, the others in her peer group would follow her example.

Cassiopeia in particular was enthusiastic about Seven's prospects for awakening. Lyle grimaced; Cassie was an excellent operative, very brave and very good at her job. But like many of the others, she was quite naive. Like most of the denizens of Zion, (brainwashed as they still were by Morpheus and the Kid's tired rhetoric) Cassie believed that Neo's pointless sacrifice seventeen years ago (and the truce with the Machines that followed) had been good and necessary. And like a few others aboard the Lamassu, she was totally out of the loop. In any case, it was highly unlikely that Cassie would have approved of his plans for Seven, for Zion, and for the Matrix itself had she known about them.

Yes, it was true that the Machines were now allowing anyone who wanted to be unplugged from the Matrix to leave. But in Captain Lyle's mind, the Machines were still a threat so long as they existed. No truce was ever going to change that. It was just the nature of the Beast. And the fact remained that the humans plugged into the Matrix were still the Machines' primary power source.

"I'm telling you, Seven's more than ready," Cassie gushed when she reported back in, breaking his train of thought. "We could have this girl unplugged within the week! I'm going to try to make contact with her, and see if I can set up a meeting with the Oracle."

Lyle could only smirk at Cassie's earnest exuberance. Apparently she still hadn't made the connection yet: the fact that The One and their current target had the same last name and middle initial.

_Poor Cassie. You were a great little spy, but not too bright. I'm going to miss you._

"Excellent, Cassie," Captain Lyle answered. His console was right next to the chair where she was jacked in; it was too easy, really. Lyle reached down and put his hand on the plug in the back of her neck. "I'll tell your daughter that you fought bravely against the Agents," he said.

"Agents? What the hell are you talking about? I don't see any-"

That was as far as Cassiopeia got before Captain Lyle pulled the plug, and her lifeline went flat.

_If that kid finds out who she really is, it will be very, very bad for us, and very bad for Zion,_ thought Captain Lyle - or i Typhon, /i as his like-minded confederates called him - as he released the jack, letting it fall to hang slackly at the end of its cable. Those on the ship like Cassie who weren't 100 devoted to the Cause would also be taken care of, one way or another.

As would Seven, if Typhon had his way.

_No more deals_, he silently swore to himself, as his handsome face twisted into a sneer. _No more placating the Machines. Neo's "peace" dies tonight._


	2. Growing Pains

Chapter 1 - Growing Pains

Seven's eyes snapped open as she abrubtly awoke. The feeling she had was one of anxious disquiet, as though something terrible had just happened. Her foster father would have said it was the type of feeling that a person got when someone "stepped on their grave."

Of course, Seven knew that her feelings of distress could be attributed to the fact that she'd stopped taking her pills three days ago. She couldn't explain the sudden impulse that had prompted her to stop taking her medication. At the time, she had wondered if she'd feel any different, and if the odd symbols and characters that she'd often seen in her head when she was a little kid would return full-force, dropping in continuous vertical streams like rain in an odd double-image overlapping whatever she happened to be looking at. It still happened sometimes, but with the pills it was easier to tune it out.

Sighing, Seven pulled herself up from her bed, groggily moved over to her computer desk, and switched on the machine.

"FWI: I know I should have told you guys before, but I've stopped taking my pills," she told her friends in a mass email. "If I snap or something and go on a homicidal rampage, they're in my locker. See you in class."

So saying, Seven logged off and dropped back into her bed, hoping to grab just a few more hours of uninterrupted sleep before she had to go to school.

But the feeling of unease remained.

"Wha-"  
Seven awoke for the second time that morning to the harsh claxon of her alarm. She silenced it with a grimace and dressed quickly, and appraised her looks with a quick glance in the mirror. Nothing was any different from the day before; normal dark hair, dark eyes in a sharp-featured face that was just a trifle too pale, on a body that was just a little too thin. Sighing in frustration, Seven grabbed her bookbag and headed down the hall to the kitchen.

"Morning, Janie," her forster mother greeted, without really turning to look at her as she rifled through the fridge for the orange juice. Amelia Blair was a delicate woman with dark blonde hair who worked as an Insurance claims adjuster. Seven always felt that she was disappointing her foster mother somehow. It seemed to her that what Amelia had _really_ wanted was a little copy of herself, pretty and popular, instead of the misfit girl that been assigned to them.

Nevertheless, Seven knew how lucky she was. She'd heard stories of kids like her who'd been abused and neglected in foster homes, kids who turned against the system and became criminals as a result of their feelings of frustration and rage. She'd always felt that this was an ever-present danger; that if she stepped out of line even once, she'd wind up like them no matter what the conditions of her foster home were like.

Therefore, Seven's overriding goal until the day of her emancipation was keep her head down and her nose clean, to keep from attracting notice until the day she was declared an adult by the State. Her teachers saw her as a shy and reticent outsider, reluctant to speak up in class, teased and ridiculed by many of the students and virtually ignored by the rest. However, she did have a few friends; Jim Weir, Simon Clary, and Andrea Roosevelt, who were better known in the online community as Loki, Magus, and Circe. None of them were considered to be real troublemakers (though Jim and Simon were widely thought of as irritating class clowns by the faculty) but only because they kept their extracurricular activties a closely-guarded secret; for the past two years, Seven and her circle of friends had dabbled in the rudiments of hacking.

So far, most of their crimes were minor at the very worst; Magus had once hacked the school attendance database to bump his attendance record up from Poor to Needs Improvement. Loki hacked the websites and computers of people he didn't like at school, had written a few trojan horses, and was generally a practical joker. Circe's hacking activities were mostly confined to hacking online games and the liberal use of gaming "cheats."

Seven's reasons for learning to hack were much more serious, and much closer to her heart. For as long as she could remember, she'd been curious about her parents. She was getting to the age in which she would soon be able to legally request any documents regarding her parents from the state; the problem was that she simply refused to wait until the state felt that she was ready to know who she actually was and where she came from. In the course of her search, Seven had developed hacking skills that far outstripped those of her friends.

But once she'd scratched the surface, it seemed that there were no other records or documents regarding her parents to be had. "Normal" people left a "paper trail" of official records and transactions behind them as they travelled through life. The lack of _any_ information at all about her parents at all was more than a little disturbing in what it implied, and it frustrated Seven to no end.

_It's like they've been deleted,_ Seven thought, discouraged. _Like in the movie **Brazil**. They've been removed from the system entirely, and it's like they never existed at all...except that **I'm** here._

The feelings of unease that had gripped Seven in the night persisted throughout the day. Seven fumbled through her classes, unable to focus on anything else but her nameless worry that something had gone horribly wrong, and was about to get much, much worse.  
Until third period Algebra, when they did.

Magus and Loki, who sat behind Seven and one row back (Mr. Jameson liked to keep groups of friends seperated in his classes) passed her a note with a little scribbled caracature of herself wielding an uzi and a machete, with big bloodshot eyes and a caption that read,

_"Y00r H0m1cidal R4mPag3!11" ("T4ke y00r m3d5, y0!")_

The two jokers behind her were struggling to keep their mirth contained, drawing looks of suspicion from their surrounding classmates. Turning to look at them, Seven cracked her first wry smile of the day. She had to admit, it was pretty funny...

That was, until Mr. Jameson stormed over to her desk and demanded to know what was so amusing.

"You know the policy on passing notes in my class, Miss Anderson," Mr. Jameson snapped. "Give it to me," Quaking inwardly with fear, Seven had no choice but to comply. Her fear became abject terror as Mr. Jameson's face turned red...and then abrubtly pale.

"Come with me, all three of you," Mr. Jameson demanded. "This school has a no-tolerence policy for threats like this one!"

"Threats? What in the hell? It was just a joke!" Loki exclaimed, startled.

"That'll be enough out of you, Mr, Clary. Do I need to call campus security to escort us to the office?" Mr. Jameson snarled.

To Seven, it felt as though the eyes of her classmates were burning holes in her back as she followed Mr. Jameson. She could have died, right then and there. She _wanted_ to die. Silently, she prayed for a chasm in the Earth to open and swallow her up as Jameson frog-marched them down to Principal Tyler's office.

"I'm sorry..." Seven stammered automatically, as Principal Tyler stared at the note. He was a thin, middle-aged balding man, but he was much-liked by the students of Clearview High School for his ability to see things from their point of view. As frightened and embarrassed as she was, Seven felt sure he'd see reason.

"It was just a joke, Mr. Tyler," Magus began. "We passed her the note. Whatever you do to us, please leave her out of it."

"Yeah, we passed her the note. It isn't her fault," Loki concurred.

Her eyes brimming with gratitude, Seven looked from her friends back to Principal Tyler, who had yet to voice his verdict on the matter. For Mr. Jameson, however, the matter was already decided.

"We cannot tolerate threats of violence like this from the student body!" He thundered. "I'm sure you remember what happened in Colorado. That wasn't so long ago. These three should be expelled!" Officer Rudy, the Campus Cop (who had been summoned by Mr. Jameson to witness the proceedings) nodded emphatically.

"Now hold on a minute, Gary," Principal Tyler said to the overreacting Jameson. "Jane here has never had anything more serious than an occassional detention for tardiness. And Jim and Simon..." he glanced up at the two boys and continued, "well, they may not be angels, but I doubt we're dealing with the Trenchcoat Mafia here."

"It doesn't matter! School policy demands they be expelled!" Mr. Jameson reiterated, with another supporting nod from Officer Rudy.

"Would you three mind waiting outside for a minute?" Principal Tyler asked them. "There are some things that Mr. Jameson and I need to discuss in private." It sounded as though Mr. Jameson was the one in trouble in Principakl Tyler's eyes, and not them; Seven allowed herself a ray of hope as Officer Rudy escorted them out into the small waiting area in front of the Principal's office. She could hear the argument raging inside;

"I know that you're inclined to look favorably upon every kid who darkens your door, but the fact remains that this offense was perpetrated by two known delinquents, and a foster kid with a troubled past who is under their influence!" At the words "foster kid," Seven gasped as though she'd been slapped in the face.

"That _bastard_," Magus snarled, patting Seven's shoulder in an awkward gesture as she struggled to contain her tears.

"_Thank_ you, Mr. Jameson, that will be _all_," they heard Principal Tyler retort. "I don't appreciate you telling me how to do my job, and I'm _not_ going to let you disparage or intimidate three perfectly good kids because you're scared to death of what happened at Columbine!" So saying, he strode out into the waiting room.

"Jane, Jim, Simon? This little joke was in _very_ bad taste," Principal Tyler told them. "I trust that I won't see anything like it from the three of you ever again, am I clear? You are free to go."

Grinning triumphantly, Magus and Loki practically lept up from their seats. Seven got up a bit more unsteadily, still shaking from the "foster kid" comment.

_All of that work, trying to fit in...or to at least keep from being a nuisance. None of it means anything,_ She thought, swallowing around the lump in her throat as she followed her friends back out into the hallway.

Although she and her friends hadn't been expelled by Principal Tyler, Seven soon came to wish that they _had_ been as the day wore on. Seven was used to being tormented by a specific section of the student body...the "preps" and "jocks" who took exception to her somewhat androgynous looks and mode of dress, (namely a sweatshirt, jeans, and tennis shoes, day in and day out) and the fact that she was a "computer nerd" through and through. They'd always been nasty to her, but now it seemed as though students who had never payed any attention to her at all were going out of their way to make up for lost time.

"_Freak,_" one girl hissed at her in the bathroom in between classes. A boy in the hall knocked her books out of her arms in the hall in between fourth and fifth period; he and his friends laughed trollishly as she dropped to her knees and gathered them back up, giving in to the tears that she had withheld outside of the Principal's office.

Almost worse than that was Larry, a kid who was publically known to be bipolar, and had taken it upon himself to stage a one-boy Intervention during lunch. In full view and hearing range of everyone at the lunch table, he regaled Seven about The Time He Stopped Taking His Lithium, and impored Seven to Keep Taking Her Medication, or Something Really Bad would happen.

Following his advice, Seven rushed down to her locker after lunch, grabbed the bottle of pills, and swallowed the recommended dosage without water, feeling the pills stick in her throat with the sour aftertaste of the geletin capsules. She felt sickened, personally betrayed by her own personal weakness.

Seven was a basket case by the time school let out. Her friend Andrea, (better known to their circle of friends as Circe) walked her home, which was some consolation. But even Circe's company could not quell the pain completely, especially when she touched on a subject that Seven was heartily sick of by now:

"Why _did_ you stop taking your meds?" she asked.

"I dunno. I just felt like it. It was time," Seven answered. "But it doesn't matter. I took some after lunch."

Circe nodded. "It'll be ok. they're just a bunch of vultures - but with short attention spans. They'll all be picking on someone else by the time Monday rolls around. You'll see."

"No, they won't. But thanks all the same," Seven said as they neared the house she shared with the Blairs, and the two girls parted ways.

Seven stepped through the door to see James and Amelia Blair waiting for her on the sofa, and sighed, feeling yet another Intervention was in the works.

"Rough day, Pumpkin?" James asked her as she took a seat on the ottoman across from them.

"Principal Tyler called us today. He said that you had some trouble with your math teacher," Amelia said. "Janie, did you skip your meds today?"

"I took some this afternoon," Seven said, thouroughly exhausted from all of the prodding on the subject.

"The psychiatrist proscribed that medicine for a reason," Amelia told her firmly. "Why would you skip it?"

"Did you just forget?" James asked her. "That's understandable. I know you've been under a lot of stress."

"It's ok, really. I just forgot, is all," Seven assured them.

"You ok? You look pretty rattled," James asked her.

"It's just...Mr. Jameson..." she stopped, unable to give voice to the horrible slur that Mr. Jameson had uttered earlier. _"Foster kid."_ Just thinking about it almost brought tears to her eyes. It hadn't been what he'd said, so much as the _way_ he'd said it.

"The other kids at school..." she began again, but that topic was just as painful. As she sat there, struggling to come up with the words to describe her anguish, Amelia said,

"I know you're trying, but things would be a lot easier if you just made more of an attempt to _fit in_."

"You're not a bad girl, Janie, but things like this happen to people who go too much against the norm," James told her. Amelia nodded, and picked up the thread of where her husband left off.

"It wouldn't be so hard if you just made a little bit more of an effort to _conform_, Janie," Amelia said. "The problem is, you just don't _blend._ Your hair, for example...it would be so pretty if you'd just let it grow out! And you so rarely wear feminine things. I know you like comfortable clothes, but you really do dress like a boy! You know what? Why don't I just take you to the mall this weekend?"

_Oh sure. Is that her "fix" for everything? Shopping is going to make everything allllll better,_ Seven thought sarcastically, then chided herself; truly, they were just trying to help. She had no right to feel ungrateful, none at all.

"Thanks," she muttered with a forced smile. "I'd like that, I really would."

Seven tuned out the conversation over dinner, and retired to bed early, hoping that sleep would provide some sort of release from the day's traumatic events. But if anything, her dreams were even more distressing.

_The rain beat down on them relentlessly as they fought, colliding in the air like lighting bolts, before her opponent finally slammed her down to the unforgiving Earth. As she lay, wounded and bleeding in the muddy crater, her enemy soared above her with the maelstrom around them reflected in the shattered, mad depths of his stormy blue eyes. _

"THIS IS MY WORLD! **MY** WORLD!" he shouted as he hovered above her...

And for the second night in a row, Seven awoke from her nightmares with a feeling of unshakeable dread.

END CHAPTER 1  
TO BE CONTINUED...


	3. Variations On A Theme

**Chapter Three - Variations On A Theme.**

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The Society For Creative Anachronism (SCA) is a real organization, devoted to preserving certain aspects, arts, and sciences of Medieval and Rennaisance life so that they will not become "lost." Currently there are over 30,000 members residing in different countries around the world.

0101010110010101010101

_Saturday morning_. Seven opened her eyes for the second time that morning, to find herself in an empty house. Her foster-father James often ran the errands that he couldn't take care of during the week on Saturdays, and Seven figured that Amelia had probably been called in to the office.

_There goes that trip to the mall,_ Seven thought. _Oh well -_

Still in her pajamas, she fixed a quick breakfast and ate it while watching the film **_Brazil_** for what seemed to be the fifty-billionth time. Seven couldn't quite explain why she liked the film (the bleak, darkly comic story of a meek clerk-turned-government-Agent who was persecuted by the same bureaucratic, totalitarian regime that he tried to serve) so much. There was just something about it that resonated with her, but she couldn't quite put her finger on _what_, exactly. Wahtever it was, it both fascinated and repelled her with equal intensity.

She had made it about halfway through the movie when Loki called.

"Hey dude," Loki asked. "You aren't just sitting there all depressed, watching **_Brazil_ **again, are you?

"No," Seven said, her eyes flicking towards the television screen.

"Liar," Loki said. She could practically hear him grinning over the phone. "We're up at the park. Grab your gear and get out here!"

Her spirits lifted by the invitation, Seven leapt up from the sofa, switched off the movie, and raced back to her room. She paused long enough to throw on some suitably rugged clothes, before grabbing the canvas duffel bag that contained her "gear."

During her stay with the Blairs, Seven had picked up a hobby that was shared by them and their friends. They were all members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, otherwise known as the SCA. Members of the SCA studied the culture and history of the Middle Ages, to a point that non-members (often called "Mundanes" by SCAdians) found obsessive. Their study included the myriad styles and periods of medieval clothing, and many forms of combat. It was the combat aspect that Seven particularly excelled at; she and her few friends practiced down at the park almost every weekend.

As she made her way to the park on foot, Seven admitted to herself that it was shaping up to be a lovely day. The sun was shining, and it was neither too hot or too cool. A gentle breeze and the distinctive _thwack_ of rattan (a type of bamboo) practice swords greeted her as she reached her destination.

Seven and her friends liked to practice in an open clearing, devoid of too many trees. As usual, their only spectator was an aging black woman in a green dress, who sat a distance away on one of the benches overlooking the lake. Seven noticed that she mainly just smoked, ate candy, or fed the pigeons. The others never seemed to notice her at all, and the green-clad woman had never approached them. Seven gave her a polite wave before running off to join her friends.

It didn't take long for Seven to get into her practice armor: a padded vest, a steel skullcap, knee, elbow, and shoulder guards, and a shirt of "four-in-one" chainmail. Her shield was a modified garbage can lid with a handle and arm straps riveted on, and a thin layer of padding on the inside (camp foam) to absorb some of the shock of her opponent's blows. Her "sword" was a three-foot rattan shaft with a shellguard at one end, the entire length of which was wrapped in duct tape. She also had an epee (because James had insisted she learn to fence as well.)

Brandishing her sword, Seven joined the fray. Here, she was in her element. She relished the feel of her opponent's "blades" as they connected with her shield, almost as much as she enjoyed scoring "hits" against them. For their part, Magus and Loki gave as good as they got, and Seven was tired, bonesore, and sweating by the time she realized that the old lady had vacated the bench where she usually sat.

_That's strange. She's usually still there by the time we leave_, Seven thought. _In fact, I don't think she's ever left before us..._

Something else caught Seven's eye as she glanced over at the bench where the woman had been sitting - _a plaque?_

That in and of itself wasn't strange; Seven had seen them on benches all over the park. But she'd never seen the plaque on this one.

"What is it?" Magus asked, following Seven's path of vision over to the bench.

"Just a second, guys," Seven said. Curious, she disengaged from her comrades and went over to get a closer look. Then her world abruptly began to tilt, as she realized that the "lead" on her parents that she'd been seeking for the past four years was right in front of her.

There on the bronze plate, like a sign from God, were the words "IN MEMORY OF THOMAS A. ANDERSON."

Seven literally had to reach out and grab the arm of the bench in front of her to keep from falling over. Concerned, Magus and Loki rushed to her side.

"Woah," Loki said, comprehending as he saw the plaque. "Hey, you think it's not just a coincidence? I mean, Anderson _is_ kind of a common last name," he suggested.

Whatever input Magus had to offer was cut short. The three of them jumped at the sudden blast of a car horn coming from somewhere behind them.

Seven glanced over her shoulder to see Amelia Blair sitting in the Blair's Volvo with Circe.

"Not a word of this to anyone," Seven insisted. "At least not until I get a chance to check it out."

"Got it," said Magus, nodding.

"Hey, I thought we were going to the mall," Amelia stuck her head out of the Volvo's open window and cheerily exclaimed, as Seven made her way over to the vehicle. Magus and Loki helped her pack her gear into the trunk.

"What's going on?" Circe asked as Seven climbed into the back seat with her friend.

"I'll tell you later," Seven whispered as Amelia took off for the mall.

010101010101010101010

If it hadn't been for the fact that her heart seemed to be pounding almost hard enough to dislodge the lump in her throat, this shopping would not have been the harrowing experience for Seven that it usually was. This was chiefly due to the fact that Seven felt more willing than usual to give in to Amelia's desire to buy her "girly" things in order to get them out of the store, so she could get home and start working on the new "lead" that much faster. The fact that Circe was along to back her up when it came to rejecting suggestions that just weren't _"her"_ didn't hurt, either. But Amelia's main bone of contention was the fact that Seven was selecting so much gray. Charcoal gray slacks and tights, a gray sweater, a dove-gray silk blouse, and a gray pinstripe skirt ("You are _such_ a corpgoth," Circle told Seven good-naturedly at one point.) Seven liked the color gray; her favorite garment of all was a lovely dark grey wool hooded Inverness cape that she'd gotten for Christmas, and wore whenever it was cold or raining, except up to school; school authorities considered it a trenchcoat. "Trenches" were strictly banned.

Seven finally got a chance to tell Circe about the discovery she'd made at the park earlier that day while the two of them were browsing through the racks of trendy vinyl pseudo-gothware in Hot Topic. Amelia generally avoided that store as a rule, and had stepped into the boutique next door.

"Thomas A. Anderson?" Circe asked her. "It could just be a coincidence, but still…are you going to check it out?"

"Of course! It's the first clue I've had in almost a year," Seven answered her.

"In Memory Of," Circe quoted. "You know that no matter what you may find out about this 'Thomas A. Anderson-"

"Yeah, I know what it means," Seven interrupted softly. "But still…I've at least got to see if it leads anywhere. Even if I find out that anyone else who might have been related to me is dead. At least I'll know where I came from. And besides, even if 'Thomas A. Anderson' is dead…_somebody_ had that plaque put on that bench. I have to find out if this has anything to do with me."

Circe nodded symphatically.

"Well, for what it's worth, I hope you really find something this time…and it turns out to be good news,"

"Thanks," Seven said as they left the store.

010101010101010101010101

It was late afternoon by the time that Seven and Circe got back home. Seven stopped briefly to deposit the day's loot at her house, before heading off to the Basement Loft with her SCA gear in tow.

The "Basement Loft" was located in the basement of the house where Jim Clary lived, and had been their principle hangout since before Seven had come to live across the street with the Blairs. It was a wide, reasonably clean open room furnished with an old sofa, a table and chairs, some throw rugs, and the group's many computers (in various states of repair) strewn out along the floor and on desks throughout the entire place. It even had its own little bathroom in the west corner near the stairs that led up into the house, which Seven herself kept scrupulously clean. If there was one thing she really couldn't stand, it was an icky bathroom.

Three years ago, the four of them had vowed to pool their allowance in order to buy the best and fastest PCs they could afford, and as many PC games as they could to go with them. This had resulted in countless PC LAN parties, making the foursome the envy of the whole neighborhood.

Seven knew what was going on inside as soon as she made her way down the outside basement stairs and opened the door; the sound of dice hitting the table told her all she needed to know.

"Heyyyy Seven!" Magus called up from behind the Dungeon Master's screen. "Wanna jump in? The party's on the road to Waterdeep, but I'm sure I could arrange for them to meet Guinevere at the next Temple of Tyr on the way."

"No thanks. There are a few things that I need to catch up on," Seven said. As much fun as she would have had battling Orcs as her multiclass Paladin/Ranger Guinevere, Seven had another mission this evening that she felt was a lot more pressing.

"Right," Magus answered, with a knowing nod. "Good luck," he added.

"Thanks," Seven said as she logged onto "her" computer, located on a desk against the back wall of the basement.

_"Thomas A. Anderson,"_ she thought. _It could be another dead end...or not. _She immediately began a search for the name online, looking for public legal records, news articles, obituaries, _anything_ that might lead her to information about her parents.

Then the screen suddenly when black.

"Wha-" she began, started, as greenish text began to appear on the screen;

_**"Hello, Seven."**_

She overcame her shock enough to type in reponse;

_**"Who is this?" **_

She looked over to Circe (who was seated at the computer at her own desk) thinking that it might be a practical joke, but no; Circe seemed to be way too involved in her **_World Of Warcraft_** game session to be capable of pulling a stunt like this. For a moment she wondered if her longtime self-appointed guardians had chosen to contact her over the blowout that had occured with Mr. Jameson at school the day before. But she doubted it was them.

_AJ wouldn't take over my computer_, Seven thought bitterly. _He'd just show up and demand to know why I wasn't towing the line. Then he'd have my computer - along with all of the rest of them - confiscated._

The answer she received proved that it wasn't AJ or any of his associates, and it caused Seven's heart to leap into her throat;

_**"I was a friend of your father."**_

Blinking around the tears that threatened to fill her eyes, Seven responded,

_**"Who are you?"**_

She waited, almost beside herself with anticipation as the words scrolled across the screen;

_**"Follow the white rabbit."**_

**_"What?" _**Seven typed, confused at the cryptic message.

**_"Knock knock, Seven,"_** ran the reply. Then, almost as if cued, a knock sounded at the basement door. It opened, and Morgan O'Donnell sauntered into the room.

"Hey Morgan!" Loki greeted the tall, attractive young woman as she sat down on the table. Morgan O'Donnell was a college sophomore who had befriended the gang before she'd graduated from Clearview High almost two years before. Though she was as much of a gamer, a sci-fi fan, and a "computer nerd" as the rest of them, one would never know it from the way she dressed and behaved. And the confident, alluring way she carried herself drove the boys (and some of the girls) to distraction. A "goth" through and through, Morgan was dressed tonight in black leather high-heeled boots, black fishnet stockings, a plaid miniskirt and her ever-present leather biker jacket was thrown on over her _Sousxie and the Banshees_ concert T-shirt.

"Guess what?" she asked.

"I dunno. What?" Loki asked, leering at her fishnet-clad legs.

"I can get you guys into the Hel Club tonight!" she announced jubilantly. "Come in with me, and the bouncers won't even ask to see your ID. As long as you don't try to order any drinks, no one will be the wiser. How about it? Who wants to go clubbing?"

"I'm in!" Loki announced. He'd been scheming for months to find a way to sneak in to the exclusive gothic-industrial dancehall.

"What's the point if we can't order drinks?" Magus quipped. "Hey Circe, Seven, you ladies feel like unplugging yourselves long enough to subject yourself to an evening of sin and depravity?" He said the last bit with a humorously exaggerated dramatic flourish, before cracking an encouraging grin..

_And get into more trouble?_ Seven wondered. _Is this such a good idea?_

"It's not like we're going to be any different by our eighteenth birthdays a year from now," Circe said. "I'm in."

"Just…I got something going on here that I need to take care of," Seven said, gesturing towards her computer screen. But when she glanced back up to where the cryptic message had been, the rest of her words died in her throat. The screen was completely blank, as though the strange missive had never been there are all.

_What the -_

"Aww, come on Seven," Morgan said. "Surely you don't want to hang out here all by your lonesome on a Saturday night! Just give it a chance. If you don't like the Hel Club, there's a midnight showing of **_The Rocky Horror Picture Show_** going on at the Madison. What do you say?"

Turning to face Morgan from where she sat at her computer, Seven got a good look at her jacket for the first time that evening…and noticed the playboy bunny logo patch that had been stitched onto the jacket's right shoulder since her last visit.

"_Follow the white rabbit?" You've got to be kidding me!_ Seven thought.

"Ok," Seven said finally. "If you're absolutely certain we won't get caught."

"Don't you trust me?" Morgan asked, grinning like the proverbial Cheshire Cat.

Over the next fifteen minutes, a cover story was fabricated for the benefit of their parents (or in Seven's case, her foster parents) in which the group was planning on a trip down to the local Starbucks, before heading on up to the Madison Theatre to see **_The Rocky Horror Picture Show_**. Circe dashed off to her own house for the appropriate clubwear, while Seven ducked into the basement's tiny bathroom with her SCA gear, some of the day's purchases from the mall, and her Inverness coat. She came out five minutes later dressed in the charcoal leggings she'd bought that day, and her combat boots. She'd pulled on her chainmail shirt over her gray T-shirt, and had draped her Inverness over it all, wearing it open like a cloak.

"Check it out! It's Seven of the Nine Fingers!" Morgan quipped, well familiar with another of her friends' favorite obsessions – **_The Lord of the Rings_.** "Are you planning a voyage to Mt. Doom on the way to the club?"

"Don't give her a hard time, Morgan. The 'rennie-goth' look works for her!" Circe said.

"She'd look more like Aragorn if she had beard stubble," Loki joked. "I could go get the spirit gum-"

"I don't _think_ so!" Morgan exclaimed, laughing. "Let's get going!"

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TO BE CONTINUED!


	4. Revelations From Hel

Chapter Three: Revelations from Hel

Seven darted an anxious glance around the Starbucks coffeehouse as she sat down at the table with her latte. Her Inverness was buttoned closed, but the metallic clinking noise made by the rings of her chainmail shirt was making her self-conscious, anyway. But what bothered her even more was the cryptic summons she'd received back in Loki's basement. Seven had not told the others about it yet; she'd guessed that the fact that someone had temporarily hijacked their secure connection, even for a few minutes, would not have gone over very well with them. She decided she'd tell them after meeting the mysterious contact who was responsible for the hacking, especially if he or she turned out to be sinister.

_Follow the white rabbit? _She thought, staring at the logo on the shoulder of Morgan's jacket. _Follow it where? Why would a friend of my father's be at the Hel Club? What does Morgan know about this? _She'd thought of pulling Morgan aside and asking her if she knew anything - if, indeed, she knew this mysterious family friend, and if they had sent her on this specific errand. But as yet, there had not been a chance for her to do so.

_This meeting may not even be at the Hel Club, _Seven reasoned. _Heck, this friend of my father's may even be at the **Rocky Horror Picture Show**. _She had the somewhat amusing mental image of someone coming up to her in the dark, crowded, noisy, festively chaotic theater, and saying, "Hey I knew your father," before being beaned in the head with a flying roll of Charmin.

_I'm still wondering how whoever it is was able to remotely access my computer, _she mused. _How'd they get past our firewall? They would have had to have cracked our WEP key, or something. And Loki changes that every two weeks. He never uses the same one twice._

"Seven? Is something wrong?" Circe asked. "You're being even more quiet than usual."

"I'm ok...just nervous," she explained.

"I'm telling you, you won't get caught," Morgan assured her. "I did this too once, you know. _And_ I was just a sophomore at time. You guys actually _look_ like you could be eighteen."

"So_ that's _where you were sneaking off to on Thursday and Saturday nights!" Loki exclaimed. "I'd wondered. We were worried you were gonna flunk out or something."

"Yeah, well so was I," Morgan said. A note of relief that she _hadn't_ flunked was apparent in her voice. "And yet, here I sit. Still alive, well, and about to be a junior in college. Trust me, you have nothing to worry about."

"Will we be meeting anyone up at the Hel Club?" Seven asked. This was as close as she could come to asking Morgan about the message, without giving the whole thing away.

"There are tons of cool people up at the club. And crappy ones, too. You'll end up meeting them all."

Seven studied Morgan's face, but did not see any sign that she was trying to cover anything up. Discouraged, Seven devoted her attention to her latte. She promised herself that she would get to the bottom of this before the night was over.

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Getting into the Hel Club was much, much easier than Seven had imagined it would be. They had no ID cards, but Morgan was true to her word. The shaven-headed leather-clad doorman took one look at Morgan and the gang, and grinned as he ushered them past the velvet rope.

"Hey Morgan! These the new recruits?" he asked, winking conspiratorially as he let them pass.

_New recruits?_ Seven wondered.

They_ were _searched. Or at least, the Seven, Circe, Magus, and Loki were. Morgan just breezed past the metal detector as if it weren't there. The coat check lady did offer to take Seven's coat, but she declined. She got a compliment on her chainmail from the bouncers, but some instinct that she couldn't explain made her button her Inverness right back up to her neck once the search was done.

Seven's eyebrows shot up at the sight of the rows and rows of guns on display in the coat-check area; in her estimation, _weapon-check area _would probably have been more of an apt description of the place.

"Woah. Do people actually try to bring that stuff in here?" Loki asked. Morgan nodded.

"Security here is pretty tight," Morgan explained. "No guests are allowed to pack heat."

"They didn't search _you_," Magus observed. Morgan gave him a wry smile.

"I'm a regular," she said, as if that explained everything.

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As they entered into the club proper, Seven _felt_ the music even before she heard it, throbbing up through the soles of her doc martens. She'd never been in a place where the music was so _loud, _not once in her entire life. As they hit the dancefloor, Seven felt like a mole, suddenly thrust blinking and confused into blinding sunlight as she was swept up into the dance. The energy of the scene before her hit her with the force of an oncoming wave, as did the realization that she had not taken her pills since the day before, at school. When she'd made the decision to stop her pills the day before last, it was because she'd resented them as a form of control. Not once had she suspected that the _hallucinations_ might return. She hadn't seen them for years...

_Oh crap_, Seven thought. _Not here. Oh please, not now..._

Every time the beat throbbed, the golden-green letters, numbers, and symbols she'd seen as a very young child - the "code" that her medication was supposed to screen out - pulsed in and out of her sight. During the more bass-heavy songs it bounced shakily in and out of coherency; during the slower songs, it flickered like a bad fluorescent light. The strobe-like effect made it hard for Seven to focus her eyes on anything - and made her feel queasy, to boot.

_Resonance_, she thought wonderingly, overwhelmed, as her mind frantically struggled to reconcile it with the "normal" scenery around her. But as she looked, Seven noticed that the "code" seemed to flow upward like a river, up to the balcony above them, to coalesce in the figures that sat in state above the teeming throng. Almost...as if the people above them, two in particular (who fairly gleamed with the amount of code that they were taking in) were_ feeding _on the energy of the dancers below.

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From his gilded perch above the dance floor, the Merovingian looked down upon his world, and lo, it was good. He smiled. It appeared that Morgan had indeed met her quota this evening, as she had promised.

Every one of the Merovingian's prospective servitors was occasionally called upon to introduce "new blood" into the sea of regulars who, every Thursday and Saturday night, graced the silken strands of his gothic-industrial web. The Hel Club served its purpose well, as did those who returned, night after night, caught up in the back-biting social intrigue and the endless drama of the local Goth Scene. The Scene was known to be notoriously close-knit, albeit "socially cannibalistic." It was often remarked that those within it "ate their own."

_If only "they" knew how right they are_, The Merovingian mused, allowing himself a private, predatory little smile at the thought.

It was then that the Merovingian noticed that one of the newcomers was staring up at him: a small, pale girl who stood alone, shrouded in a gray, cloaklike coat as she hovered over by the bar. A green, untried thing by the looks of her, though there was certainly something tasty about her wide eyed innocence as she returned his gaze from the floor below. But something about her was naggingly familiar.

0101010101010101010010

"Morgan? Who is that?" Seven asked, shouting to be heard above the din as she gestured towards the balcony above them.

"That's the Owner and his wife," Morgan explained, smiling as if at some amusing secret. "Why? You wanna go up there?"

"Just wondering," Seven answered.

Her head swam with the implications of what she was seeing as she made her way over to the bar, like a castaway trying to tread water. Once there, she gripped the comfortingly hard edge of the bar and shook her head to clear it, trying desperately to gather her wits as the audio-visual assult relentlessly battered her senses.

_This is an illusion,_ she thought, regarding the flickering code around her. _A glitch in my perception. I've dealt with this all my life. I'm not going to flip out now, and embarrass myself in front of my friends. I'll just take some more pills when I get home, and everything will be fine..._

_And where is this so-called friend of my father?_

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At that precise moment, five men were entering the Hel Club. They submitted to the coat-and-weapons check up front. The Merovingian's guards missed the well-concealed little ceramic knives that each of them carried, however; blades that, had they been discovered, could not have been mistaken for anything other than the discreet tools of assasination that they were.

Typhon spotted Seven standing over by the bar. Her friends were otherwise occupied on the dance floor, and for the moment she was quite alone.

_Perfect_, Typhon thought smugly, feeling for the handle of the knife that was hidden in his sleeve.

10101010100101001010101

Seven _felt_ the presence of the five men before they surrounded her, cornering her near the bar. But they were quick, and there was no time for her to slip back into the crowd. Their leader immediately commanded her attention; a tall, muscular man with close-cropped blonde hair. His eyes were concealed by sunglasses, and his face betrayed no emotion whatsoever. He and his four companions all looked like they were quite capable of holding their own in a fight.

A voice spoke at the back of her mind:

_"These men are not your friends. This is a trap." _

"Seven?" the leader asked.

"Yes, she answered, her voice catching in her throat.

"Goodbye," he said simply, and lunged.

Then, as the beat of the music (the part of her mind that wasn't inwardly shrieking in terror recognized the song as _"Thousand" _by Moby) increased in tempo, the overlapping code-image that had been bouncing around so unsteadily all evening suddenly snapped into clear focus - both in front of her eyes and _within her mind. _

And as everything fell into place, every dodge, parry, and counterattack seemed as clear and obvious to her as if she'd seen it marked out like dance steps on a chart beforehand. There was an empty beer bottle on the bar beside her. She grabbed it, swinging it out in an arc that knocked the knife out of the hands of one of her attackers. Sensing movement behind her, she swept backwards with it, and had the satisfaction of feeling it connect with something sufficiently hard enough to be someone else's skull. She felt the glass shatter, and the formerly blunt-force object was now suddenly a nasty weapon with a lethally jagged slashing edge. She lept towards the blonde in front of her like a fencer, only to see him dodge away in the nick of time.

_Shit, he's fast,_ she thought, as he avoided her attack.

Seven ducked past the knife of the man standing next to the blonde. But then another one of them had managed to get between her and the bar, and grabbed her from behind, knocking the bottle away from her as he seized her around the shoulders. She flip-kicked upward, the momentum tearing her out of the grasp of the man behind her even as her feet connected with another one of the other men in front of her.

Then the beat abruptly halted as the song entered it's "breakdown," and the code before her eyes faded back to its former intermittency. The sudden instability was jarring, and for a split second she was unable to see anything at all.

_Blind!_ Her mind screamed in horror.

"You aren't going anywhere, Smith!" someone shouted in her ear. She felt the impact of the little knife as it struck her in the back...and the muffled curse of its wielder as it snagged on the wool of her Inverness, and shattered on the chainmail she wore.

Then there were gunshots. As her "normal" sight returned, Seven saw two of the attackers fall to the floor. As they fell, she saw the ones who had done the shooting; three men in dark suits, all of them bearing Desert Eagles.

_Here?_ She questioned, blinking.

The muscular blonde broke and ran, barrelling into the crowd of panicking onlookers. Seven saw him pull what looked like a walkie-talkie out of his coat. He screamed something into it.

Then everything went dark, and the music stopped completely.

_"Seven!"_ She heard Morgan's voice scream, and someone was pulling her up off the ground. She allowed herself to be dragged along for a few feet before the sounds of running prompted her to do the same.

In the chaotic stampede for the exits that ensued, Morgan manuvered Seven past the crush of bodies, ducking through a side-entrance to the dance floor with Loki, Circe, and Magus scrambling behind. They came to a flight of stairs leading upward, and Morgan thrust Seven in front of her.

"Go!" Morgan shouted. "This goes to the roof! _Hurry! _You can make it to the roof of the building next to this one. Take the fire escape from there to the ground!"

"Aren't you coming?" Loki asked her.

_"GO!"_ Morgan repeated, pushing him ahead of her onto the staircase behind Seven, whose eyes widened in shock as she saw Morgan pull a _gun_ out of her jacket, and charge back out of the door that led to the dancefloor.

"Come on!" Magus exclaimed, running past them up the stairs. They reached the door to the roof in short order. True to Morgan's word, the rooftops were close enough for them to be able to leap to the roof of the next building over. They found the fire escape, as Morgan described. But there was a trenchcoat-clad man on the ground below them who opened fire the moment he saw them. They were trapped on the roof, or so it appeared.

Looking up, Circe spied a rough scaffolding between the roof were they were, and the rooftop of yet another building. It was a tenuous thing jerry-rigged out of plywood, probably in use by a local maintenance man. She wasted no time getting across the thing, and Magus was right behind her. But as Loki attempted to cross, the wood buckled under his weight. Magus and Circe barely caught hold of him in time and pulled him onto the roof with him as the entire construct fell apart and tumbled into the alleyway, leaving Seven stranded.

"It's too far to jump!" Loki called out to her. "Stay there - we'll get help!"

As gunshots rang out around her, Seven heard the voice in the back of her mind again, the one that had warned her about those men in the club;

_"You can make this jump. Go for it."_

She looked down. They were about four stories up; Seven realized that a fall from this height would almost certainly be fatal. And even if she survived, there was at least one gunman on the ground who would finish the job...

_"Go now!" _the voice within her urged. Taking a deep breath, she backed up, got a running start, and _leapt..._

...and had all the wind knocked out of her as she hit the roof on the other side.

10101001100101001110101

Loki's heart stopped when he saw Seven's feet leave the edge of the rooftop. It did not resume beating until she hit the roof they were on with an ungraceful _thud, _falling to the concrete in a heap. Looking back at the roof where she'd just been, he started as he saw an Armani-clad shadow dart towards them, effortlessly gliding through the jump that Seven had just made with an ease and swiftness that made Loki's blood run cold. Then the man in the suit turned and fired, hitting the gunman on the ground below them sqaure in the chest. He was joined by his two equally sharp-looking companions before the gunman's corpse even hit the pavement.

The first man-in-black to arrive regarded Seven (still prone on the gound) with a cold stare.

"You'd better work on that landing, Miss Anderson," he growled.

"AJ? What the hell _was_ that just now?" Seven demanded, pulling herself up into a standing position. "And how did you guys know we were in danger?" she asked, stealing a surreptitious glance at her friends.

"We knew that _you_ were in danger, Miss Anderson," the man corrected. Though his face was impassive, Loki thought he could detect a hint of impatience in the man's granitelike features.

"As you have seen, none of you are safe here. Take your friends and go home. We will make sure you are not followed." So saying, he and the other two turned and started walking towards the edge of the building.

"Agent Johnson!" She called out to the departing man in black. "Hey,_ AJ!"_ As her friends stared at her in surprise, Seven broke into a trot until she caught up with him.

"What, Miss Anderson?" The Agent, apparently named Johnson, snapped.

"Can you please tell me what the hell is going on?" she asked.

"No, Miss Anderson," he snarled. "_Go home_. You've already caused enough trouble tonight!" Even in the dark, Loki saw Seven's stricken expression - but her response was cut off by the two of other Agents, who had looked as thought they'd been listening into their wired earpieces during Agent Johnson's entire exchange with Seven.

"We've just received word that Miss Anderson may have been deliberately led here," the shorter of the two said, as he inclined his head towards Loki, Magus, and Circe. The taller Agent beside him nodded and continued,

"We've also run a scan on Mr. Clary, Miss Roosevelt, and Mr. Wier. It appears that the feed into their pods has been hacked."

"What about Miss O'Donnell?"

"Hers as well," the shorter Agent answered. "It seems that she was as unaware of her role in Typhon's plot as the rest of them."

It took a moment for Agent Johnson to absorb this, and for a moment he appeared to be listening into his own earpiece. Then he glanced back at Seven and her three friends. Even through his sunglasses, the look he turned on them made Loki extremely nervous.

"Get them out of here," he said.

"_Wait_!" Seven exclaimed. "What's going on here? Why won't you guys ever _tell_ me anything?"

Agent Johnson's smile was almost sadistic.

"In due time," he answered her. "In the meantime, you will return to your foster family and wait for further instructions."

"Dammit!" Seven protested, as the air around them began to waver.

"Oh, and Miss Anderson? _Take your medication_," Agent Johnson's voice seemed to hang in the air as Loki opened his eyes and sat up to find himself quite safe, in his own bed.

_...The hell?_ He wondered.

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"Was that truly necessary, Agent Johnson?" Agent Brown asked, from where they still stood on the rooftop.

"It is possible that Miss Anderson might be more cooperative if she knew more about her origins, and her purpose." Agent Jones suggested.

"We'll need a trace running on Typhon and his band of deviants," Agent Johnson growled at the two lesser Agents, ignoring their questions about Seven entirely. "Zion will need to be informed that a number of their operatives have apparently gone rogue, before there are any…_misunderstandings_…and the truce is endangered."

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MORE TO COME...STAY TUNED!


	5. After The Fire

Chapter 4: After The Fire

As his awareness of the real world on board the _Lamassu_ returned, Typhon opened his eyes to see his First Mate Nicodemus standing over him. Behind Nicodemus, the rest of Typhon's loyal followers looked on with grim expressions on their faces. Some were visibly wounded, bearing the marks of their scuffle with Neo and Trinity's offspring - and after that, the unplanned struggle with the Agents who'd opened fire on them up at the club. Typhon himself had reached his exit none too soon, bolting into the phonebooth with an Agent hot on his heels.

"This was supposed to be like gutting a rabbit!" Nicodemus snarled in frustration. Typhon answered him with a cold little smirk. Among the Captains of the Hovercraft Fleet, Typhon was well-known for his cool, laid-back attitude and unflappable demeanor - as opposed to his First Mate's volcanic and frequently explosive temper.

"Where'd she learn to fight like that?" asked Raid, another one of Typhon's men. "She hasn't even been unplugged yet. How was she able to focus?"

"She was wearing some sort of body armor!" Nicodemus's youngest brother Paul exclaimed. "She must have known we were coming."

"You mean _Smith_ knew we were coming," Typhon corrected. "_He_ was doing all the fighting. Little Miss Anderson is just along for the ride," he sneered.

"Do you think..." Paul began, "that if we get him out of there somehow...you know, like an exorcism or something...that she'd be ok?"

Typhon leveled a stern-but-understanding gaze at the youngest member of his crew. Inwardly, he was grinning like a fiend. _Poor, impressionable little Paulie_, Typhon mused. Paul had always been weak. If not for his slavish devotion to his two older brothers, Nicodemus and Ebenezer - who were in turn fanatically loyal to Typhon himself - Paul would have been killed along with Jax and Cassiopeia, on Typhon's orders. But for now, he was necessary. The three Augustine brothers were inseparable. As loyal as they were to him, Typhon knew that Nicodemus and Ebenezer would strongly object to any attempts to cull their little brother from their midst.

"The essence of Smith is rooted deep within her very being," Typhon explained to Paul. "It happened when Neo allowed himself to be taken over by Smith, when he _betrayed_ us to the machines. And his daughter is the very same. There's no 'getting Smith out of there,' Paul. They're part of the same entity. Smith has to be _expunged._ And to do that, we're gonna have to kill her. I'm sorry, but that's the way it has to be. And you're just going to have to deal with that, and do your part when the time comes."

Paul swallowed and nodded, and Typhon suppressed another smile.

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The Merovingian grinned pleasantly at the young woman who sat across the table from him - an expression that he knew she would (correctly) interpret as a sure sign that she was metaphorically on thin ice at the moment. Morgan O'Donnell, better known to him and his followers as Morrigan, had been near the center of last night's attack at the Hel Club. She and the other Club Hel "Regulars" had managed to drive the warring Rebels and Agents from the club, but the Merovingian had seen the whole thing start when the small group of Rebels had rushed one of her new "Recruits."

Further investigation of the matter had shown that the Matrix code feed into Morrigan's brain had been tampered with. Uncouth brawling in his domain was one thing, but the thought that someone would dare to try and manipulate one of his own underlings set the Merovingian's teeth on edge. He'd had her firewalled, of course. Though it was hardly a serious expenditure of effort on his part, the fact that he'd had to do it at all was an annoyance. The Merovingian silently promised himself that the impudent Rebels would pay for their arrogance and their cavalier presumptions.

For her part, Morrigan looked suitably cowed. She knew very well what happened to employees of the Merovignian who screwed up, and the Merovingian himself had not yet seen fit to inform her that she'd been hacked. Despite her success in helping to run off the attackers and pursue them to their exits (which were now known as such to the Merovingian himself) it was likely that she wasn't expecting to live out the night.

"This girl, Seven. She has been a friend of your for a while, yes?" The Merovingian asked.

"Seven? Yeah. We went to school together until I graduated," the Morrigan explained, the words leaking from her like air from a punctured balloon. "They've all got potential, but I figured Seven would be a shoe-in once we got her out of her shell -"

The Merovingian held a hand up, interrupting her.

"She seems quite familiar to me," he said. "You've never brought her here before? No?" He asked, as Morrigan shook her head emphatically. "You are certain she is not connected to the Resistance in any way?"

"She doesn't know any Redpills," Morrigan insisted. "She doesn't have any idea about the Matrix. She's a goddamn church mouse. There's no reason why those guys should have attacked her. It has to be a case of mistaken ID."

Questioning Morrigan was an amusement, really; everything he wanted to know was obtainable with a little effort on his part, via his usual resources. For example, he already knew that "Seven" was actually Jane Anderson, a seventeen-year-old Junior at Clearview High who lived with her foster parents on 3434 Percy Lane. But as he assimilated the data, his mind suddenly made the connection;

_Seven. Jane A. Anderson..._

...and a stream of French profanities poured out of the Merovingian's mouth as all of the information suddenly fell into place, causing Morrigan's ordinarily fetching blue eyes to bulge with terror.

"Is the Fortune Teller _insane_? Is she trying to _kill us all_?"The Merovingian shouted as he lept to his feet. "It is too soon since the last time! _Nom de Dieu_!" He stared hard at Morrigan and ordered,

"Find your friend. Bring her here! Do not come back unless she is with you, do you understand?"

Morrigan nodded, apparently mute with fear, as she practically bolted from the room in order to carry out his command.

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Seven awoke suddenly, to find herself in her own bed.

_It figures_, she thought bitterly, her mind still reeling in a state of shock after what had happened. It wasn't the first time the Agents had done this, but it was the first time that others had been with her.

_Shit! Are they ok?_ She wondered. Seven sat bolt-upright, and winced as her side exploded in pain. Blinking, she remembered the knife had penetrated her Inverness and broke on the chainmail she was wearing. A backwards glance in the mirror confirmed what she had suspected; there was a huge bruise on her back where her attacker's blow had landed.

_It could have been worse_, Seven thought grimly, as she examined the wound. _Like what would have happened if I hadn't been wearing the chainmail, for instance. Still, I'm lucky he didn't break a couple of my ribs while he was at it._

But right now, a bruised back was the least of her worries. All of her life, Seven had known that for some reason she was not entirely _safe_. The Agents had shuffled her between foster families and safehouses for years, all while refusing to answer her questions about their reasons for doing so. Her life for the past four years with the Blairs had been the most relatively "normal" part of her life that she'd ever known. For a while she'd even wondered if the danger - whatever it was - had passed. Last night's events at the Hel Club had blown that misconception right out of the water.

_Somehow they got past our security, hacked my PC, and lured me to the Hel Club in order to kill me. But why? Why me?_

With an exasperated sigh, Seven realized that she knew who did know. _The Agents_. But she doubted that wild horses would have been able to drag it out of them.

_They must be protecting me for some reason_, Seven thought as she quickly dressed and pulled on her combat boots. _You'd think that one of them would have said something to me about the reason why...but no._

Seven had always resented that fact that the fate of her parents - her entire past! - was being kept from her by the Agents. For years she'd been "good," and played by their rules, taking her medicine when she was told. And her good behavior had availed her nothing. Grilling the Agents for information about her parents was like ramming into a brick wall forehead-first; the only thing she's ever gotten out of it was a headache and an angry, thwarted feeling in the pit of her stomach that would not go away.

Then she'd hoped to find out something by going over their heads; by becoming a hacker. And that hadn't gotten her anywhere, either. Despite the danger, a part of her was inwardly ecstatic at the idea that she was probably closer to finding the truth of her origins than she'd ever been before.

_Someone is going to tell me something,_ she resolved. _Sooner or later, one of them is going to crack. Or two of them, rather. And I think I know which two. And if Morgan was in on the scheme, why did she protect me? The Agents did say something about...hacking?_

On impulse, she reached towards her Inverness, hanging on its familiar peg on the wall...only to find that it was completely whole and unscathed.

_What?_ Her mind boggled. _That knife went right through it! But...then why is my back practically every color of the goddamned rainbow?_

Shaking her head in confusion, Seven hurried out into the hall. She emerged in the living room, to find her foster father James Blair seated at the coffee table, at work on yet another architectural design.

"Hey Pumpkin, how was the movie last night?" He asked, looking up from his work and smiling at her.

_Movie?_ She thought, then remembered the "cover story" that she had told her foster parents regarding their whereabouts the night before, even as her brain supplied the nearest appropriate **_Rocky Horror Picture Show_** audience participation screamer line. _("Eddie? Dinner?")_

"Surreal," she answered simply, as she headed for the door.

"Well, Rocky Horror always is," James concurred. "Headed out to the loft?"

"Yeah," Seven answered and nodded, looking back at him. _What's going to happen to James and Amelia if those men come after me, here? _She thought with a sudden stab of panic. _What if the Agents didn't get them all? What if they're still out there?_

Then, Seven was suddenly afflicted by a feeling of anguish almost as bad as the worry for her foster parents' safety as another possibility occurred to her;

_I'll probably be moved again. Goddammit. I liked this place. I liked these people...I liked having friends..._

"I'll see you later," Seven said, hoping that the break in her voice wasn't audible to James as she rushed out the door and practically fled across the street...

...to find all three of her friends waiting for her. By their expressions, it was clear than an explanation was in order. An explanation that Seven didn't feel up to giving, because she did not quite understand it all, herself.

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Of the four of them, Loki had "awakened" first, in his bed. The first thing he'd done was call Magus, who lived next door. Circe lived one street over, but had gotten herself to the Basement Loft well before Seven.

"Dude...we had this really fucked up dream last night...the same fucked up dream," Loki began, breaking the awkward silence. "We were at the Hel Club, and these guys jumped you, and you got all Dragonball Z on their asses, and these guys in black suits with guns just popped out of the crowd and started shooting them, and Morgan was totally kicking ass and shooting them, and then when we were on the roof and you did this uber-anime rooftop jump like the Tick, except without the broken masonry -"

"What the hell happened last night?" Magus asked, cutting Loki off. "I know we just woke up in our beds just now, but that...felt real. And we all remember it."

With a sigh, Seven sagged into a sitting position against the doorframe of the still-open basement door, head in her hands; until she remembered that they were probably all still in danger, whereupon she jumped back up, slammed the door shut, and locked it.

"I don't know who those men were," Seven said. "I just know that for some reason, the Agents...those guys in black suits...have been in control of my life. And I don't know why."

"Agents?" Magus repeated.

"Yeah," Seven confirmed. "They're the ones who put me with the Blairs. They've been...watching out for me for a long time. But they won't tell me anything."

"Wait...what did they do to us?" Circe demanded. "One minute we were up on that rooftop. The next, we were all home."

"We lost time," Seven answered her.

"What do you mean, 'we lost time?'" Magus asked, calmly but firmly, looking Seven straight in the eye.

_"We lost time,"_ she repeated. "That's the only way I can describe it. It's something they can do, something that usually happpens whenever they think I'm about to see something I shouldn't see."

"What...you mean like in Alien abductions?" Loki asked, smirking. Then his eyes went wide in startlement as the pieces fell together in his mind, at least for him.

"Holy shit! Those were Men In Black! THEY DE-NEURALIZED US!" Loki exclaimed.

"That's just a movie, Loki," Magus insisted. "The Illuminati, however, are _real_."

As Circe rolled her eyes, Seven knew that Magus had gotten onto one of his favorite subjects. Magus was an avid conspiracy theorist when it came to the Illuminati: supposedly a shadowy, semi-secret occult organization that allegedly ran the world behind the scenes.

"The Illuminati have figured out all sorts of things from hoarding the secrets of the Ancients," Magus said. "How to bend time. How to hack reality. That's why they come down so hard on anyone who seriously studies 'Magick,' and anyone who witnesses paranormal phenomena - _they want it all for themselves_," Magus paced dramatically as he counted off on his fingers: "ESP...Remote Viewing, Telekenesis, Immortality, Prescience…they want the knowledge of how to do all that exclusively for their own use. Your parents must have been into some serious shit, Seven. Just like Morpheus."

Morpheus was a subject who interested them all. Though the legendary super-hacker hadn't been seen in years, his memory lived on the minds of every budding hacker who wanted to be "in the know," who aspired to "leetness."

"Morpheus learned how to hack reality. He was a real wizard. The first since Aleister Crowley!" Magus exclaimed, clearly excited. "That's why they wanted him dead, along with anyone else who stood with him."

Then, as the idea struck him, Magus suddenly turned and asked,

"Holy shit, Seven, do you think your parents were with Morpheus?"

"But then why would those Agents be trying to protect her?" Circe asked.

"The child of two of Morpheus's apprentices, under their thumb? What wouldn't they give for that?" Magus grandly speculated. "You saw her last night! You saw how she fought - well, up until the point when she was moving too fast for the eye to follow!"

Seven had to admit that she didn't feel like anyone's Arcane legacy at the moment. She felt like she wanted to crawl under a rock somewhere and hide for a long, long time. The way this one-sided conversation was going, she half expected the Agents to come swarming in, to do something a lot worse than simply making them "lose time."

"Quick, anyone know when the last Morpheus sighting was?" Magus asked.

"Five years ago, in Greece," Circe answered. "Nobody's seen him since then."

"You don't think he's dead, do you?" Loki asked.

"Have you been taking crazy pills? Magi don't die! They ascend," Magus retorted, over Circe's incredulous snort.

"But then why were those guys trying to kill me?" Seven asked.

"Well, if they're on Morpheus's side, they might think that you've spent too much time under the Illuminati's Influence," Magus answered. That you're a lost cause. That you've fallen to the Dark Side..."

"Oh, come on!" Circe interrupted. "You've been watching the _X Files_ way too much! You're making all these assumptions, and we don't really know anything yet!"

"Whoever it was, they were good enough to hack into my PC last night," Seven said finally.

"WHAT?" Magus practially shouted. "Why didn't you tell us this before?"

"Great. Now you're going to yell at her," Circe quipped.

"It happened when I started researching that name I found at the park yesterday: 'Thomas A. Anderson,'" Seven said. "Whoever it was, they knew I was looking for him. It was like they were lying in wait."

"Fuck," Loki cursed. "Anyone who has the skills to get into our setup will be able to bypass any security measures we come up with. We're screwed."

"I'm going to try to talking to two of the Agents I know," Seven said. "I'm going to see if I can convince them that I've finally seen too much for them not to tell me anything."

"Unwise," Magus cautioned her. "If they think you suspect anything, they'll probably just shoot you."

"If they were going to shoot me, they probably would have done so long before now," Seven assured him. "The general feeling I get from them is that I'm an inconvenience, but that I'm worth keeping alive."

"Who was that big one? The one you were yelling at?" Loki asked.

"That was Agent Johnson. He's their leader," Seven explained. "I call him AJ because it irks him. Trust me, if he was going to shoot me, he would have done so already…and probably just for that alone."

"And the others who were with him?"

"Agent Brown and Agent Jones. I've actually lived with them before. They're pretty good at pretending to be normal...somewhat better than the others, at least. I'm going to see if I can get them to tell me what the hell is going on."

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TO BE CONTINUED!


End file.
